See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.
HTML and XHTML
This failure relates to:
The objective of this technique is to describe a failure that occurs when
structural markup is used to achieve a presentational effect, but indicates
relationships that do not exist in the content. This is disorienting to
users who are depending on those relationships to navigate the content or to
understand the relationship of one piece of the content to another. Note
that the use of HTML tables for layout is not an example of this failure as
long as the layout table does not include improper structural markup such as
<th> or <caption>
elements.
Note: Though an element's semantic meaning is generally exposed to AT, the WAI-ARIA presentation role can be used to suppress the native semantics of an element so that they are not mapped to the accessibility API. Setting an element's role to presentation may avoid this failure by hiding that element's semantics from the user.
In this example, a heading element is used to display an address in a large, bold font. The address does not identify a new section of the document, however, so it should not be marked as a heading.
Example Code:
<p>Interested in learning more? Write to us at</p>
<h4>3333 Third Avenue, Suite 300 · New York City</h4>
<p>And we'll send you the complete informational packet absolutely Free!</p>
In this example, heading markup is used in two different ways: to
convey document structure and to create visual effects. The
h1 and h2 elements are used appropriately
to mark the beginning of the document as a whole and the beginning
of the abstract. However, the h3 and h4
elements between the title and the abstract are used only for visual
effect — to control the fonts used to display the authors' names and
the date.
Example Code:
<h1>Study on the Use of Heading Elements in Web Pages</h1>
<h3>Joe Jones and Mary Smith<h3>
<h4>March 14, 2006</h4>
<h2>Abstract</h2>
<p>A study was conducted in early 2006 ...
</p>
The following example uses blockquote for text that is
not a quotation to give it prominence by indenting it when displayed
in graphical browsers.
Example Code:
<p>After extensive study of the company Web site, the task force
identified the following common problem.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The use of markup for presentational effects made Web
pages confusing to screen reader users.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The committee lists particular examples of the problems
introduced by this practice below.</p>
Example Code:
<fieldset>
<legend>Bargain Corner</legend>
<p>Buy today, and save 20%</p>
</fieldset>
No resources available for this technique.
Check that the element's semantic meaning is exposed to assistive technology and appropriate for the content of the element.
If check #1 is false then this failure condition applies.